I've neglected you!

I am so sorry everyone! Things have been a little busy, all non-wedding realated these days!

I'm waiting on my step dad (still!) to fix the printer so I can do the assembly of the invites blog. My daughter turns 4 today!! And we are having a big party on Friday. My FMIL has touch of pneamonmia after comeing home from a trip to Europe. Alex has been traveling for work more and we were very sick last week - Paige and I...

Wow...that's a lot. So to make it up to you I bring you two little gifts......

#1 - check out these Thank You cards I made for My friend and fellow Bee Michelle, who's getting married on SARURDAY! Holy cow, right?! SHe wanted something simple and wouldn't you know I just so happen to be really good at simple :-)

They are made to order through Vista Print - if anyone needs something contact me! I'm happy to make you anything you need, at an EXTREMELY reasonable price!

Sorry for the funny border - for some reason it's not going all the way around....weird...

AND #2- if thats not enough for you - I give you my photographers blog, on which you can see some AMAZING pregnancy photos of my sister who is due the end of this month with her first baby, a little girl she plans to name Kati (Kah-Tee-Ah)

Kari Layland Photography Blog

Look around and you're sure to find Mr S and I too ;-)

The Brilliant Penguin

Miss Penguin, that is.

Oh yes, another Wedding Bee Wonder! *Sigh* I am in awe of the woman on this board. They must be channeling Martha or something because, really I'm pretty creative and lately I require a helmet to even think hard.

I am not ashamed to say I will steal their ideas and sprinkle them around my wedding reception!
However my upbringing will completely stop me from being able to take full credit for them and I know about 300 times at my wedding reception I will be saying things like:

"Oh, my centerpieces? Thank you! Well I got the idea from Mrs Lemon on Wedding Bee....."

"You loved the favors, how sweet! Well you see Miss Penguin did it with.....oh who's Miss Penguin...well..."

My latest love is Miss Penguin's favors, which just happens to be coasters!

Oh I know, how perfect right? I have a box of 156 glass Love coasters, that got voted of the Favor Island a month back to be replaced with cookies. Well I've now started to think of booting the cookies, and bringing back the coasters and giving them the Penguin Treatment.

Once the votes are tallied I'll let you know which contestant will remain on Favor Island. Until then I'm back to my Wedding Bee bloggers, to drool over the little details....

Cookies and Coasters

Yeah, I don't think they go together either. And this post will show you it's not good to impulse buy wedding items!!!

So over a month or 2 ago I hit up The Knot and find they are having a sale on these really cute, and simple coasters that say "Love" on them. $1.99 for a set of 4, we bought 62 sets with the intent to break them down and give one to each guest.

Awesome, cheap favor coming in at about .50 each guest!

Well, about 3 weeks ago I find this awesome cake lady who's making us square cookies with our monogram on them for the wedding. I thought I'd use them as escort favors to show people to their tables.

Then I changed my mind.

And I though that maybe we could use them as a send off treat at the end of the night with milk. A mid night snack, that is becoming ever so popular at weddings these days.

Then I changed my mind.

Then I thought that maybe we could just leave them out for people to pick up if they wanted, but being worried they may not be found and we'd have a million left over....guess what:

I changed my mind.

Now, okay I can back out of the cookie thing but the deal is I'm so excited about them, I'd rather ditch the coasters more then anything....but being how heavy they are it would be hard to ship them if I sold them on ebay.

So I do what it is I do when I hit a snag, I call on my Hive - my Wedding Bee gals. They brainstormed and came up with the idea of (specifically it was FutureMrs) using the sets of 4 as Bridal Shower Favors, and the cookies for the favor at the wedding.

And this is what I will do, that and keep a couple and give a few away as Bridesmaids gifts in their toats... Something so easy to do, and I couldn't figure it out with out these girls. I'm really considering putting on my program:

"This Wedding brought to you by WeddingBee.com"

My Hive rocks!

Finding my Center.... (Piece)

I took a little inspiration from Mrs Lemon on Wedding Bee, the magical appearance of great clearance items at Target and my highly creative future mother in law, and made my self the most perfect table centerpieces for the reception!

Here's a step by run down of what I did, where I got it and what it looks like....on my pool table anyway....since the wedding isn't until August.

Mrs Lemon gave me the idea of hitting up Ikea, but not limiting myself to the the candle holders only in their Home Decor area, but to venture out in to the wilderness of the Kitchen department as well. And I have to say - she was right, I made some pretty good finds!


The first one is my main piece, the center of the center piece if you will...

MJOD designed to be a 22 oz Beer glass, which I found in the Kitcehn area of course. It comes 6 to a pack for $6.99, I bought up 4 packs for a grand total of $27.96


Next tallest is also a glass designed for drinking from called SVALKA
They are 4 inches tall and come 6 to pack like the larger ones. They are bit cheaper, coming in at $4.99 a box.
(They kind of appear square in this photo from some reason but they are in fact round.)
I bought up 12 boxes as I intended to have 2-3 per center piece, for a grand total of $59.88

The last glass item I bought from Ieak that day was GLIMMA an actual item created for candles. They are 1 inch tall tea light holders, I should note these are for the 10 hour tea lights, which are a great deal larger then the regular ones you buy in a bag at Target.
The also came 6 to a pack, in a plastic round tube packaging, found in the Home Decor section. I bought up 12 backs of these at $1.29 each tea light holder for a Grand Total of $99.00

Matching GLIMMA CANDLES are sold in packs of 24 for $4.99, these are the 10 hour brun time candles. I got 4 packs for a Grand total of $19.96

The candles I used for the largest holder is called FLORERA they are 25 hour burning candles, 4 inches in height. The site says $1.49 each but I know I only paid .99 each and I needed 24 of them for a Grand Total of $23.76.


The one thing I had a hard time finding at Ikea was simple and plain votive holders and votive candles of standard size. I needed them to complete the look, so I popped over to www.candles4less.com and bought up a box of 144 votives with candles in them for a total of $80, I also bought a box of votives for the medium holders but got the wrong size and have to reorder some more and I'm thinking I will get these I just have to double check the size and make sure they will fit.

Here's the pictures of the set up on the black sparkley chargers I picked up at Target on clearnace for $1.27 a box of 4. I'm going to be 2 short because I only bought enough for 22 tables, and now I need 24 or 25. I'll make due I think that the extras just won't go on chargers. Grand Total for those is $12.00.

You have to imagine the frosted ones are replaced with the clear ones though. I didn't gt a chance to shoot off some new pics of them in the set up yet.

You can see the sparkle in the plate - it looks like white specs, but it's glitter. Don't mind the pics, I shot these on the pool table

So all in all I spent a grand total of: $239.00 and divide that by 24 tables and it's $9.96 per center piece, with left over candle holders for the cake table and head table! Not bad!!!!! And the nice thing, everything is ok to sell afterwards in most cases and I can use these things around the house if not so I'm not throwing anything away!

Wedding Bee Front page News!

As promised here's the link to the font page of Wedding Bee where my invite is put up to the polls for all to see....

Okay so the link thing isn't working - I guess I'm not savvy enough to make it work. Here's another way to get to the site:

www.weddingbee.com

and if you scroll down you will eventually see my invites show up!

I have to say before I end this post that I really feel good about this invitation thing. I remember looking back over all these Wedding Bee posts and seeing these beautiful DIY invites that I never thought I'd be able to create. I asked a million questions and now, my invite is the one up and I'm getting a million questions! It's great.

I have a feeling after this wedding is over, I'll be on paper crafting overload and not want to touch another stamp of adhesive again for months - but until then - I'll enjoy every minute of it.

I'm Famous!

I also have a habit of exaggerating a bit from time to time too...

Maybe I should explain a bit better.

I'm a Wanna-be- Bee (that didn't help did it?)

Okay I'm a regular poster on WeddingBee.com a chat site where I go to talk to other brides to be. (their main bloggers are called "Bee's") It's a large site, and recently I've been posting the samples of the invite I'm making to get the input back from all the gals on there.

Well....they are posting it on their MAIN PAGE tomorrow morning to put it to a national vote, and I SUPER exited!!!

Now I'm all jittery, wondering if I took good enough pictures, should I blur out the info a bit better....will people hate it? Argh!

Anyway I'm sure I'll keep track of it on here as well, but if you'd like to check for yourself you can always go to the main page of www.wedding bee.com and look for it :-) I'll put up a link as soon as I have one.

Yippiee - I'm kinda famous!